Data processing system and method for generating a representation for and random access rendering of electronic documents

ABSTRACT

A data processing system and method for generating a representation of an electronic document, for indexing the electronic document, for navigating the electronic document using its representation and for displaying the electronic document on an output device. The system and method are used with electronic documents having descriptive markup which describes the content or meaning of the document rather than its appearance. Such documents may be represented by a tree. Each markup element defines a node or element in a tree. The tree is represented by providing a unique identifier for each element and for accessing a descriptor of the element. An element descriptor preferably includes indications of the parent, first child, last child, left sibling, right sibling, type name and text location for the element. The document representation is used to facilitate navigation of the text for constructing navigational aids such as table of contents and full text indexing. A document is also provided with a style sheet for specifying desired formatting characteristics for each type of element in the document. To display the document, a suitable starting point is found on the basis of a selected starting point. The document is displayed beginning with the suitable starting point and the format characteristics for each element displayed are retrieved from the style sheet and applied to the text of the displayed element.

This application is a divisional of application Ser. No. 08/885,578,filed Jun. 30, 1997, entitled DATA PROCESSING SYSTEM AND METHOD FORGENERATING REPRESENTATION FOR AND RANDOM ACCESS RENDERING OF ELECTRONICDOCUMENTS, and now U.S. Pat. No. 5,983,248 which is a continuation ofapplication Ser. No. 08/480,611 filed Jun. 7, 1995, issued as U.S. Pat.No. 5,644,776 which is a divisional application of Ser. No. 08/419,051filed Apr. 7, 1995, issued as U.S. Pat. No. 5,557,722, which is afile-wrapper continuation of application Ser. No. 07/733,204 filed Jul.19, 1991, abandoned.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

This invention relates generally to methods and apparatus for formattingdocuments in electronic or other non-paper media, and more specifically,for generating representations, indexing and rendering on a computerscreen of electronic documents. More particularly, this inventionrelates to indexing and rendering of electronic documents, especiallyelectronic books, having descriptive markup and hierarchical content.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Because of the increased availability and use of computers and improvedmethods of communication between them, it has become common to usenon-paper media for transmitting and storing documents. Such mediainclude magnetic and optical disks, tapes and other storage systems.Documents developed and transmitted in such form (hereinafter calledelectronic documents) are often also viewed on computer display devicesand need to be rendered, or displayed, on a computer screen or otheroutput device, in a readable, or formatted form. These systems havebecome popular for and are particularly useful with very large documentswhich may be used by many people. Such documents include large system,manuals, engineering designs, and the like.

Many currently available computer systems format and display electronicdocuments, such as word processors having "what-you-see-is-what-you-get"(WYSIWYG) displays, hypertext systems, and desktop publishing systems.These systems permit one view,`or display, of a document at a time.However, currently available systems include formatting specificationsin the internal, electronic representation of a document and requirere-formatting of the whole document if a different format, such ashiding or emphasizing different portions of the text, is desired. Thus,state-of-the-art display processors are not used to their fullestcapabilities.

Moreover, most current systems, specifically information retrievalsystems, consider text as a stream of graphic display instructionsrather than as a hierarchy of various types of objects which haveformatting properties which may be changed. Without the ability tochange formatting properties of a document, the document is less useful.For example, the document may not be transferrable between differenttypes of computer systems. Furthermore, even those systems which allowchanges to formatting properties of a document require time proportionalto the document length for re-formatting. Although this amount of timemay be acceptable for small documents, such delays become objectionableduring the display of very large documents.

Electronic documents are often developed and viewed with systems havingtools for assisting navigation within the document. Such tools includefull text indexing and retrieval (i.e. searching) engines, and,particularly for large documents, tables of contents similar to thosefor printed books.

Full text indexing and retrieval engines normally index every word foundin a document and record the number of occurrences of a word and itslocation(s) within the document. However, most current systems onlyidentify the total number of occurrences of a word at one level, ordivision of a document. For example, a system may record the total for abook, or the total for each paragraph in a book. Some systems, however,report totals for a few selected levels within a document, but notcumulative totals over all levels of a document. other systems reportwhether a word occurs in one level of a document, such as a paragraph(by indicating "yes" or "no"), and cumulate the number of paragraphs inwhich the word occurs rather than the number of occurrences of the word.These systems fail to take full advantage of more advanced documentstructures to enable a user to find relevant portions of a document.

It is also common to use a thesaurus, Boolean logic, and context-basedretrieval mechanisms along with such indexing and retrieval engines.However, engines with such mechanisms do little to improve thedetermination-of the relevance of portions of a document if separatedfrom document structure. Moreover, such additional searching procedures,especially those which incorporate a thesaurus, require additional setupand time which may be objectionable to a user.

Tables of contents are also used to assist navigation of a document incurrent systems; however these systems lack more advanced structureswhich further assist a user in finding relevant portions of a document.

As described above, current systems have failed to provide the fullestcapability for a user to navigate readily an electronic document and tomanipulate such a document on a variety of output devices in anefficient manner. This failure is due primarily to the conception oftext formatting as a sequence of formatting instructions, and to therepresentation of an electronic document resulting from such aconception. For example, in current systems, format specifications arenormally integrated with a document to create a document containing asequence of display instructions. These format specifications alsonormally include pagination. However, with electronic and other systemswhich do not depend on paper, pagination is neither necessary nordesirable. Such systems fail to separate the text content from the textform.

Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a dataprocessing system and method which permits simultaneously displayingmultiple views of various portions of an electronic document, eachhaving its own (possibly distinct) format specification.

It is another object of the present invention to provide a dataprocessing system and method of rendering documents which treats text ina manner separate from formatting properties.

It is a further object of the present invention to provide a dataprocessing system and method for rendering an electronic document whichallows changes to the specified format of the document and displays thedocument with the changed format from a selected viewing locationimmediately without reformatting the whole document.

It is another object of the present invention to provide a dataprocessing system and method for indexing electronic documents whichreports, for selected words, the number of occurrences of that wordwithin each section and subsection of the document.

It is another object of the present invention to provide a dataprocessing system and method for enhancing the ability of a user todetermine the relevant portions of a document.

It is another object of the present invention to provide a dataprocessing system and method for generating a representation of anelectronic document which enables immediate display and formatting ofthe document for multiple views, improved determination of relevantportions of the document, simple selection of portions of the documentfor viewing, and the attachment of private and public annotations.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In view of the foregoing and other objects of the present invention,there is provided a data processing system and method for generating arepresentation of an electronic document, for indexing the electronicdocument to generate the representation, for navigating the electronicdocument using its representation and for displaying the electronicdocument, formatted according to a style sheet, on an output device.

The system and method of the present invention is most useful withelectronic documents having descriptive markup, such as the StandardGeneralized Markup Language (SGML). Descriptive markup is used to denotethe function or meaning of portions of the content of the document (suchas a "chapter") and normally not the appearance (such as "centered").

Such electronic documents may be understood as a tree-like structure. Anelement, or node, of the tree is defined by the markup in the electronicdocument. An element thus may have a parent element, a child element, aleft sibling element and/or a right sibling element. An element may alsocontain text. The text content may be considered to be a child elementof its containing element.

Each element in an electronic document is assigned a type name accordingto its markup. The type name may also include the type names of a parentelement and of previous parent elements, thus indicating the context inwhich an element occurs in the document. Such a type name is called aqualified name. The type name identifying the complete context of anelement is the fully-qualified name.

A document is also provided with one or more style sheets for specifyingformat characteristics for its display. A style sheet includes formatcharacteristics for type names of elements in the document. Not allfully-qualified, qualified or non-qualified names need to have specifiedformat characteristics. Format characteristics include font styles andsize, margins and other details relating to appearance and behavior ofthe document. The style sheets are normally stored separately from theircorresponding document.

In order to display a document on an output device in a manner thatenables a user to navigate it readily and to find, as much as possible,its relevant portions, a suitable representation of the document isneeded. This representation depends on the capabilities desired to beprovided to a user, and should allow quick access to document elements.

One capability provided by the system and method of the presentinvention is rapid random access to any given point within a documentand display of the document from that point. The document tree istraversed starting at the randomly accessed point from a randomlyaccessed point in a manner which allows a pre-function to be applied toeach element before any of that elements child elements are visited, andwhich allows a post-function to be applied to each element after itschild elements are visited. The pre- and post functions correspondrespectively to the beginning of a markup element (i.e. its start tag)and the end of a markup element (i.e. its end tag). Formatspecifications are retrieved from the style sheet according to the(possibly qualified) type name of each element visited in the traversal.Format specifications for an element are applied to content of theelement. To facilitate traversal of the document from a selectedelement, there is provided a representation of the document including,for each element, a field for storing the type name of the element andpreferably fields for storing an indication of any parent element, anyright sibling element, and, for each element having a child element, atleast the first child element.

An additional capability provided by the system and method of thepresent invention is display of a document beginning from a point whichoccurs after a line break, or other breaking point, in the format. Arandomly accessed element may occur in a document at a location whichmay not be placed after a line break when formatted and displayed. For amore aesthetically pleasing display, the document is traversed backwardsto find an element before or after which a breaking point occurs. Thebreaking point may be found either by examining the formatspecifications of elements preceding the randomly accessed element or byexamining the type of these elements. Preferably, the first suitableelement preceding the randomly accessed element is found, withformatting and display of the text of the document beginning with thiselement. To facilitate the backwards traversal of a document, therepresentation of a document further includes a field for storing anindication of any left sibling element, and, for each markup elementhaving a child element, a field for storing an indication of the lastchild element.

A further capability provided by the system and method of the presentinvention is inheritance of format characteristics. An element selectedfor display may be displayed according to format specifications of itsparent element. Thus, the format specifications for its parent and anypreceding parent elements are retrieved and evaluated before traversalof the element. By using a stack, evaluated format specifications forhigher levels of a tree may be retained during traversal of the documentfor display. Caching mechanisms may also be used for retaining evaluatedformat specifications.

Another capability provided by the system and method of the presentinvention is scrolling of a displayed document. Scrolling of a displayeddocument results in the retrieval of the elements which- immediatelyprecede or follow the currently displayed element. The document may thenbe displayed beginning with this preceding or following element. Tofacilitate the retrieval of these elements, the representation of thedocument further includes unique element identifiers assigned to eachelement in the document. The fields of the element directory store theunique identifiers for their corresponding elements. These elementidentifiers are preferably numbers which are sequentially assigned tothe elements in the document in the order that these elements appear inthe document.

In another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a systemand method for generating a table of contents for a document forassisting a user in finding relevant portions of a document and inselecting a starting point for its display. The document is traversedfrom the start of the document in a manner similar to the displaytraversal. During the traversal, for each element of the document whichhas a title, a record is established. This record includes the elementidentifier of the element and the element identifier of the next elementof the same or higher level in the document. An indication of the levelof the element in the tree, or of how many of the elements which containit have titles, may also be stored. The table of contents may bedisplayed in a manner similar to the actual document. Preferably, thetable of contents may be expanded and contracted by a user to displaydifferent levels within a document, such as done by standard outlineprocessors.

In another aspect of the present invention there is provided a systemand method for hierarchical full text indexing of a document and meansoperative in response to a search request for combining results of theindex with other document navigation tools, such as a table of contents.Standard full text index and retrieval engines may be used to index textin a document. According to the present invention, the results of theindex for a word are stored in a record which includes the elementidentifiers for text elements in which the word occurs and the number ofoccurrences of the word in each of those elements. Before results of theindex for a word are displayed, in combination with the table ofcontents, results for all elements in the document are cumulated.Cumulation may be performed at the time of full text index processing orwhen a search request is made.

In order to provide the above capabilities of the present invention,there is provided an element directory for representing the document,which combines the representations described separately above. Theelement directory is an array of element descriptors, wherein eachdescriptor corresponds to an element of the document. The elements arepreferably assigned unique element identifiers which are used to accessthe corresponding element descriptors. An element descriptor for anelement preferably includes a field for each of the following types ofelements with which it may be associated: a parent element, a firstchild element, a last child element, a left sibling element and a rightsibling element. The element descriptor also preferably includes a fieldfor indicating the fully-qualified type name of the element and apointer field for any text content or attributes of the element.Furthermore, each element descriptor preferably has the same size.

The fully-qualified type name field is also preferably constant in sizefor each element descriptor. This constancy may be obtained bygenerating a fully-qualified name table and indicating in the elementdescriptor for an element the location in the table of itsfully-qualified name. Preferably, the fully-qualified name table is acompressed list and the location of a name in the list is indicated byits offset in the list and the length of the name.

Another aspect of the present invention is the generation of an elementdirectory and a fully-qualified name table from an electronic documenthaving descriptive markup. This process of generating the representationof the document involves parsing the document to identify where markupelements begin and end, and which elements contain text. when thedocument is sequentially parsed, the order that elements appear in adocument may be readily determined. Consequently, sequential, numeric,unique identifiers may be assigned to each element of the document. Therelationship among elements, such as parent, child and sibling elements,also may be readily determined. Thus the element descriptors may beconstructed.

The process of generating the document representation and hierarchicalfull text indexing of the present invention may be performed by thepublisher of the electronic document. A reader of the document may causethe display processes to be performed on this document. When a userselects a document, the table of contents is displayed. The user is alsoprovided with the option of searching for a selected word in a mannerwhich is familiar to those skilled in the art, such as by using "menus".

In another aspect of the present invention a user may also makeannotations to a viewed document or maintain lists of selected startingpoints.

Annotations may be made using standard mechanisms, common in hypertextsystems, such as "webs". Such annotations, according to the presentinvention, include the element identifier of the element of a documentto which an annotation is attached. The process of displaying a documentsearches the web for annotations attached to an element to display anindication to the user that such an annotation exists.

Lists of selected starting points, commonly called "bookmarks," may alsobe generated by a process which records at least the element identifierof the selected elements. This process may be operative in response tothe selection and subsequent display of an element by a user. Theselists may also be displayed to allow a user to select a starting pointfor displaying the document.

All of the annotations and other lists preferably are stored in the sameformat. This format is preferably readily portable and the same as theformat for the document itself. That is, the same descriptive markuplanguage is used to construct these lists.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The operation and advantages of the present invention will be more fullyunderstood from the detailed description below, which should be read inconjunction with the accompanying drawing, in which:

FIG. 1 is an illustration of a data processing system in which thepresent invention may be utilized;

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of the data processing system of FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is a diagrammatic illustration of the hierarchical structure ofan example document with which the present invention may be used;

FIG. 4 is an illustration of a sample document with descriptive markup;

FIG. 5, is a diagrammatic illustration of the hierarchical structure ofthe sample document of FIG. 4;

FIG. 6 is an illustration of an element directory of the presentinvention, with example values corresponding to the document of FIGS. 4and 5;

FIG. 7 is an illustration of a fully-qualified name table of the presentinvention with example values corresponding to the document of FIG. 4;

FIG. 8 is a flowchart describing how a document is parsed to constructthe element directory and fully-qualified name table;

FIG. 9 is an illustration of a frequency record of the present inventionfor full text indexing;

FIG. 10 is a flowchart describing how the frequency record for a word isconstructed;

FIG. 11 is a flowchart describing how hierarchical full text indexing isperformed for a whole document;

FIGS. 12-14 ire example display views as produced by the system andprocess of the present invention;

FIG. 15 illustrates a preferred embodiment of a style sheet for use withthe present invention;

FIG. 16 is a flowchart describing how the table of contents for adocument is constructed;

FIG. 17A-C are flowcharts describing how a document is renderedaccording to the present invention;

FIGS. 18A-C are flowcharts describing how the starting point forrendering is determined;

FIGS. 19A-B are flowcharts describing how a depth-first search isperformed on a document;

FIG. 20 is a flowchart describing how an element of a document istraversed, or searched;

FIG. 21 is a flowchart describing how annotations are rendered accordingto the present invention;

FIG. 22 is a diagrammatic illustration of how annotations, bookmarks,history logs, and directive tasks are attached to a document by thesystem of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

A data processing system in which the present invention may be used isdepicted in FIG. 1. The data processing system 30 includes a mainprocessing unit 32 having a mass storage device 34, such as a diskdrive. The mass storage device 34 may be internal (not shown) orexternal (as shown) to the main unit 32. The data processing system alsoincludes an output device such as a monitor, or graphic display 36 and,optionally, printer 38. The main unit 32, combined with display 36, ispreferably programmed to enable multiple simultaneous views, popularlyknown as "windows", which facilitates providing the user with multipleviews of a document. A current embodiment of the invention employs, asthe data processing system 30, a Sun-4™ workstation running SunOS™Release 4.1 (a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.) or higher. Theworkstation also includes an X Window Systems™ (a trademark of theMassachusetts Institute of Technology) server and a ICCCM CompliantWindow Manager as the program or, process for enabling multiple views. ARelease 4 X Server is recommended for best performance.

FIG. 2 shows further detail of the structure of the data processingsystem 30. The main unit 32 includes a processing and arithmetic unit 40and a memory unit 42 connected to the processing unit via a bus 44. Massstorage 34 is also connected to the memory unit and. processing unit viathe bus 44 along with the output devices 36 and 38. The memory unit- 42preferably has 8 MB. of random-access memory (RAM) and 16 MB of virtualmemory. It has also been found that 2 MB RAM is suitable for a dataprocessing system including an IBM-PC compatible machine.

The data processing system may be configured to perform the process ofthe present invention using a typical programming language such as the"C++" programming language. It should be apparent to those skilled inthe art that the present invention is not limited to a specificprogramming language or data processing system and that otherappropriate programming languages and other appropriate data processingsystems could also be used.

The system of the present invention receives as its input a document,represented in electronic form, which includes text content, descriptivemarkup and possibly non-text content. Electronic documents include, butare not limited to, electronic books and operation manuals for largesystems, such as for airplane maintenance, etc. The descriptive markupof an input document is interpretable as an ordered hierarchy of contentobjects, such as illustrated in FIG. 3. That is, the descriptive markupdefines a structure including a set of elements which, when takentogether, form a tree or similar hierarchical object. A markup elementdescribes the function or meaning, rather than the appearance, of thetext which it includes. Elements representing only appearance or formatcharacteristics may be used, but are non-optimal.

In such a document, an element, e.g. element 50 of FIG. 3, may have aparent element (52), a first child element (54), a last child element(56), a left sibling element (58), and a right sibling element (60). Inthe example just described, a right sibling of element 50 does not existin the document, and is therefore defined by "nil", or some non-elementidentifier. Similarly, if an element does not have first or lastchildren elements, left sibling element, or a parent element, thecorresponding values are also defined to be `nil` or some othernon-element identifier. The text content elements 68 of a document arenormally found as the leaves of a tree.

A document may also include other types of elements which do notdescribe function, meaning or appearance of the text. These types ofelements include cross-referencing elements 62 which may be used to linkrelevant sections of a document or even separate documents. Artworkelements 64 may be used to point to non-text objects, such as graphicraster files, which also may be separate electronic documents.

An example of a descriptive markup language for electronic documents isspecified by ISO standard 8879: Standard Generalized Markup Language,or, "SGML". This standard is described in "Information Processing--Textand office Systems--Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)," by theInternational Organization for Standardization, ISO 8879-1986(E), whichis hereby incorporated by reference. Documents in SGML may be createdusing standard text editors, such as SoftQuad Author/Editor™, which iscommercially available from SoftQuad, Inc., of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.The "Scribe" word processing language is a similar document markuplanguage. Other suitable markup languages may also be used.

The preferred embodiment of the present invention provides thecapability for rendering documents which comply with the SGML standard.Such documents are preferred because of the acceptance of the standardby publishers and government agencies. SGML compliant documents may bemade from other types of documents using commercially available systems.A simple exemplary SGML compliant document is provided in FIG. 4. Thisexample is used to illustrate the process and data structures of thepresent invention and is not limiting, as the system of the presentinvention may be used readily with arbitrarily large documents. An SGMLdocument includes markup tags which may be described as start tags, endtags, or empty tags. An empty tag may be understood as being both astart tag and an end tag. In this sample document of FIG. 4, start tag45 begins a markup element. An end tag, such as end tag 47, ends thecorresponding markup element. Elements having start and end tagsoccurring between the start and end tags of another element (as tags 46and 48 are between tags 45 and 47) are defined to be children or lowerelements of the tree defined by the markup structure. Children at thesame level beneath a parent are siblings.

Some of the tags in the descriptive markup of the document may also beempty tags such as tag 49 (FIG. 4). Such empty tags may be used forcross-referencing, referencing other documents, or for referencinggraphic or other types of non-text information, etc. These tags oftenhave attributes which are variables, such as "file", to which areassigned values, such as "myfig12". These attributes may be interpretedwhen the document is rendered to retrieve graphics files, etc. Normalstart tags 45 may also include attributes which are often useful formarking text which is to be hidden for security or other reasons, or forattaching a unique identifier for an element for cross-referencing orother uses. For example, when a document is rendered, an attribute for astart tag may be examined, and if the attribute has a predeterminedvalue, display of that material may be prevented or modified, thusproviding security for a document.

FIG. 5 is a representation of the tree structure generated from thesample SGML document of FIG. 4. Reference numbers 70-89 have beenassigned to the elements defined by the markup structure of the SGMLdocument. It is preferable to assign sequential numbers, or elementidentifiers, to each element appearing in the document according to theorder of appearance of these elements in the document. These elementidentifiers are used in the generation of the document representation ofthe present invention, the element directory 91 (FIG. 6), which is usedto improve navigation of the document.

The data structure of FIG. 6, the element directory 91, is an array ofelement descriptors 90. Each element descriptor 90 represents an elementof the document. In the preferred embodiment, an element descriptor 90is easily retrieved from the array on the basis of the elementidentifier which is assigned to its corresponding element. The elementdescriptor 90 includes a field 92 for representing the parent of theelement, a field 94 for representing the first child, a field 96 forrepresenting the last child, a field 98 for representing a left sibling,a field 100 for representing a right sibling, a field 102 forrepresenting the type of the element, and a field 104 for representingthe location of text characters for a text chunk or the location ofother data associated with the element such as attributes. Those fieldswhich represent elements, such as parent, child and sibling elements,preferably contain the element identifiers assigned to those elements.

The above-described representation of an element descriptor may befurther optimized for documents which are not modified after its elementdirectory is generated. In this case, the element identifier of a firstchild of an element is always the immediately succeeding elementidentifier of that element. Thus, this field may be reduced to a one-bitrepresentation, e.g. `1` may indicate that there is a first child and`0` that there are no children.

Another variation for the element directory 91 may include elementdescriptors 90 of variable size. Since a descriptor 90 may have a fewNIL values, the size of the corresponding fields may be reduced. Anelement descriptor 90 may then be accessed from a file according to theoffset or location in the file and length of the descriptor 90. Elementidentifiers assigned to element descriptors may be mapped to the valuesof the offset and length of their corresponding element descriptors.Such a modification may reduce the size of the element directors 91, butincreases the time it takes to access an element descriptor.

In the example of FIG. 6, element descriptor 90 corresponds to element70 of FIG. 5. Since element 70 does not have a parent element, parentfield 92 includes a non-element value. Similarly, left and right siblingfields 98 and 100 also include non-element values. Field 102 includes arepresentation that element 70 is of the type, "book".

It is preferable that the size of element type field 102 remain constantacross all element descriptors. In the preferred embodiment of thepresent invention the element type in field 102 is represented by apointer to another data structure, or data file, called thefully-qualified name table. The fully-qualified name table is a list ofelement types encountered in the document. The pointer includes arepresentation of the offset, or location, of the element type in thefully-qualified name table and possibly the length of the type name.

A preferred embodiment of a fully-qualified name table is represented asa compressed list in FIG. 7. The list is compressed by representing asmany sequential types as possible in a compressed form That is, ratherthan having a list of:

"BOOK"

"BOOK,FRONTMATTER" The list is compressed to "BOOK, FRONTMATTER". Thus,repeated occurrences of a type name may be eliminated. The table of FIG.7 corresponds to the example document represented by FIGS. 4-6 and is tobe understood as a stream of characters. Thus, as an example, field 102for element 70 (of type "BOOK") would show an offset of 0 and a lengthof 4, since the first occurrence of "BOOK" is at the beginning of thetable and has a length of four characters. Similarly, the entry forfield 102 for element 76, i.e. the element whose parent is 70 and firstchild is 77, would have an offset of 47 and a length of 9, since thefirst occurrence of "BOOK, BODY" occurs at the 47th character in thetable and is 9 characters long. Likewise, element 71 ("BOOK,FRONTMATTER") has an offset of 0 and a length of 16. Various othermethods of representing a fully-qualified name for the element may beused, such as a list of fully-qualified names retrieved according totheir placement in the list. However, the preferred embodiment shouldreduce the size of this table sufficiently to allow the fully-qualifiedname table to be loaded into RAM.

Referring now to FIG. 8, the process for generating an. elementdirectory, such as exemplified by FIG. 6, and a fully-qualified nametable, as exemplified by FIG. 7, for a document having descriptivemarkup, will now be described.

The process of indexing a document, i.e. generating the elementdirectory and other data structures, begins with Step 110 ofinitialization. In Step 110 of initialization, a variable, e.g. "EID",is set to provide an initial element identifier. In the preferredembodiment, this variable is set to 0. A stack, called the open-elementstack, is created and is initially empty or supplied with a defaultelement, e.g. "#ROOT", for the first element identifier. The qualifiedname for the current element is also held in this stack and is initiallyempty or "#ROOT". Three file objects are also created, in the step 110of initialization, on the mass storage device 34. These file objects arecalled the element directory, the fully-qualified name table and thetext content. The element directory, fully-qualified name table and textcontent of a document are written to these file objects, respectively,during the indexing process. Creating these file objects and writing tothem are normally handled by instructions to the operating system of thedata processing system 30, to open a file and write to it.

After the Step 110 of initialization, Step 112 of retrieving a tokenfrom a parser is performed next. A suitable parser processes theprovided electronic document and, for each markup tag for an elementincluding-start and end tags and for each text chunk, returns a tokenindicating the type of tag and its location in the document. Markup tagsinclude start tags, corresponding end tags, and text chunks. There alsomay be tags representing empty elements, which are essentially combinedstart and end tags as described above in connection with FIG. 5. In thepreferred embodiment, for documents in SGML, parsing is simplified ifthe provided document is in normalized, or "minimal", form. This form ofan SGML document is defined by the standard mentioned above in section15.1.2 thereof. Parsers and normalizers for SGML are well known. Forexample, the XGMLT™ Engine and the XGML™ Normalizer, both available fromExoterica Corporation of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada may be used forvalidating, parsing and normalizing SGML documents.

After a token is retrieved from the parser (in Step 112), it isdetermined in step 114 whether it is a start tag or an empty tag. Theparser indicates the type of the token. If the token is a start or emptytag, a new element descriptor 90 (FIG. 6), is established in step 116,in the element directory 91 with an element identifier of "EID" plus 1.The parent field 92 for the new element descriptor 90 is set to theelement identifier of the element on the top of the open-element stack.For the first element descriptor 90 established for a document, parentfield is `0`, or other suitable initial value.

Processing continues with step 118 of saving attributes of the currenttoken in the text file and placing the location in the text file of theattributes into the text location field 104 of the newly establishedelement descriptor 90 for this element in the element directory 91.

Next, in step 120, the new element is established as the last child ofthe element at the top of the open element stack, which is its parent.That is, the element identifier of the new element is written in thelast child field 96 of the element descriptor 90 of its parent. Ifanother element is already listed as the last child of the top-of-stackelement, this other element is attached as the left sibling (field 98)of the new element. Likewise, the new element is indicated to be theight sibling (field 100) of the old last child of the top-of-stackelement. If no last child is indicated in the parent element descriptor90, the new element is also indicated to be the first child (field 94)of the parent (top-of-stack) element. Also, as part of step 120, theelement at the top of the open element stack, i.e. the parent element,is indicated to be the parent (field 92) of the new element. The firstand last child fields 94 and 96 of the new element descriptor 90 are setto `NIL` or other non-element identifier value.

After the new element is established in the element directory 91,processing continues with step 122 of appending the tag to the currentfully-qualified name, which is retrieved from the open element stack.The current name is attached using a reserved delimiter, e.g. a comma,or other character which is not a character used in any of thedescriptive markup tags of a document. The fully-qualified name table(FIG. 7) is then searched (step 124) for the appended name. If thefully-qualified name is not found, as checked in step 126, the new nameis added to the fully-qualified name table in step 128. Once it isverified, in steps 126 and 128, that the fully-qualified name for thisnew element is in the fully-qualified name table (FIG. 7), the pointerfield 102 is then set to indicate the offset, or location, in thefully-qualified name table and the length of the name (step 130).

After the new element is established in the element directory 91, andthe appropriate entry is made to the fully qualified name table,processing continues with step 132 of determining whether the currenttag is an empty tag. Since an empty tag is considered to include an endtag, if The test of step 132 returns true, the variable "EID" isincremented by 1, but this new element s not pushed onto (i.e. storedin) the open element stack (step 134). If the tag is not an empty tag,the element identifier of the new element and its fully-qualified nameis pushed onto the open element stack and the variable "EID" isincremented by 1 in step 136. With some parsers, however, an empty tagproduces both the start tag and corresponding end tag for the markupelement. In this case, steps 132 and 134 may be omitted. Somedescriptive markup systems other than SGML may not have "empty" tags, inwhich case steps 132 and 134 may also be omitted. If the parser does notproduce separate start and end tags for an empty tag, steps 132 and 134are necessary. After step 134 or step 136 of incrementing and pushing,processing continues with step 112, described above, of retrieving thenext token from the parser.

Having described the processing of start tags, the processing of endtags and text chunks will now be described.

After step 112 of retrieving the next token, and if the next token isdetermined not to be a start or empty tag in step 114, processingcontinues with step 138 of determining whether the next token is an endtag. Since an end tag ends a descriptive markup element in a document,an end tag results in popping (i.e. removing the top element from) theopen element stack in step 140 and returning to step 112 of retrievingthe next token from the parser.

If the next token is neither a start tag, as determined in step 114, noran end tag, as determined in step 138, processing continues with thestep 141 of determining whether the next token is a text chunk. If thetag is determined not to be text, the token denotes the end of the fileand processing concludes. otherwise, processing continues with step 142of establishing a new element descriptor 90 for the text chunk in theelement directory 91, in a manner similar to step 116. In the preferredembodiment, the text chunk is attached as the last child of the elementfrom the top of the open element stack, in a manner similar to step 120of attaching a new element (step 144). The type name for the text chunkis also stored. The type name may be a reserved name, such as "#TEXT",in place of an offset and length into the fully-qualified name table.Thus, a type name for text elements need not be stored in that table.Optimally, one bit may be used to indicate that the element is or is nota text element. Step 144 also includes the setting of the siblings andparent for the text chunk in the manner similar to step 120 describedabove. A text chunk normally is defined not to have children elements.

The text of the text chunk is then saved in the open text file and itslocation in the text file is recorded in location field 104 of theelement descriptor 90 for this text chunk (step 146). The variable "EID"is then incremented in step 148 and processing resumes with step 112 ofretrieving the next token from parser.

Alternatively,, text chunks could be made an integral part of theircontaining elements. As such a construction may introduce unnecessarycomplications for complex documents, it is not preferred.

With the procedure as described in the flowchart FIG. 8, a documenthaving descriptive markup, for example the document of FIG. 4, may beparsed and an element directory 91, for example as shown in FIG. 6, begenerated. This element directory may then be used to traverse, i.enavigate, the document, since, for each element, the parent element,sibling elements, child elements, and previous elements may be readilyaccessed in constant time. Such navigation is helpful for combiningrendering of the document, full text indexing, generating a table ofcontents, and creating annotations, bookmarks and history logs.Moreover, since an entry in the element directory may be retrieved inconstant time, the element directory and fully-qualified name table maybe stored and accessed efficiently on a random-access medium 34 (FIG. 1)such as a disk. Thus, for large documents, the system of the presentinvention is not limited by the amount of hard RAM in the memory unit 42of the main computer 32.

Creation of the full text index of the document will now be described inconnection with FIGS. 9 and 10. Full text indexers which find and reportthe number of occurrences of selected words in a document have beenknown for some time. Such an indexer would determine, for example, thatin the sample document of FIG. 4, the word "starting" occurs once, andthe word "system" occurs twice. However, such systems normally identifyonly the total number of occurrences of a word in a document or in acertain level of granularity of a document, such as a paragraph. Thesystem of the present invention, however, reports how many times theword is found in each element and sub-element of all levels of adocument. The procedure for obtaining this result is called hierarchicalindexing. Two methods are provided for performing hierarchical indexing;both use the data structure illustrated in FIG. 9.

FIG. 9 illustrates a frequency record table 150 which includes an entry152 for an indexed word. An entry 152 includes a field 154, whichrepresents the word and records 156 which make an ordered list of pairsof an element identifier (field 157) of the element in which the word(field 154) occurs, and the number of appearances of that word in thatelement (field 158).

The frequency record 150 is slightly different in initial result for thedifferent methods. With the first method, the resulting frequency recordfor a word initially includes the number of occurrences of that word forthe different leaves of the tree, i.e., the text chunks. When a documentis searched for a word by a user, a summation of occurrences of the wordin each element of the document performed in the manner described belowin connection with FIG. 10. According to the second method, thefrequency record for a word includes the number of occurrences of agiven word in each element or sub-element of the document rather thanonly in the leaf elements. This method is normally performed as auser-independent process, before a user views the document. Theprocedure for this method will be described below in connection withFIG. 11. With both methods, the result visible to the viewer of thedocument is the same.

The first method of full text indexing will now be described inconnection with FIG. 10. This method involves preprocessing the text bya standard full text indexer, along with constructing of the frequencyrecord as shown in FIG. 9 on the basis of the results of such full textindexing. Such an indexer is commercially available as Ful/Text™, fromFulcrum™ Technologies, Inc., of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The process ofFIG. 10 illustrates how the results of a basic lull text index arecumulated. This method is normally used for small documents, as itinvolves a significant amount of tree traversal while a user is usingthe system and viewing the document. This method may take anobjectionably long amount of time for common words with extremely largedocuments.

The method of FIG. 10 uses the element directory 91 and the frequencyrecord 152 for a selected word. The first step of this process is thestep 160 of initialization which includes setting a variable "I" to 0,or other indication of the beginning of the selected frequency record.Step 162 follows for determining if the end of the frequency record 152has been reached. When the end of the record for the selected word isreached, cumulation ends. Otherwise, cumulation continues with step 164of retrieving the element identifier of the parent of the element (towhich a variable "P" is set) identified by the first pair 155 of thefrequency record 152. If the parent is `nil`, as determined in step 166,the variable "I" is incremented to indicate and to select the nextelement entry in the frequency record 152 (step 168). Processingcontinues with step 162 of checking the end of the frequency record asdescribed above.

If the parent is not `nil`, as determined in step 166, the frequencyrecord 152 is searched for an entry for the retrieved parent "P" in step170. The search is preferably performed using a search which isoptimized for ordered lists. If the entry was found, as determined instep 172, the number of occurrences from the "I"th record is added tothe number of occurrences for the parent entry (step 174). The variable"P" is then set to be the parent element of the element previouslyindicated by the variable "P" (step 176). Processing then continues withstep 166 of determining if the parent "P" is `nil`.

If, in step 172, it was determined that the entry for the variable "P"was not found in the frequency record, the appropriate entry 155 for theelement identified by "P" is inserted into the frequency record 152(step 178). This insertion involves insuring that the frequency recordis an ordered list sorted by element identifier. Thus, a parent elementappears before its children in the frequency record. Also, childrenappear in the frequency record in the order that they appear in thetree. These relationships hold except for a system which allows anelectronic document to be edited and thus allows changes to the elementdirectory to be made.

Also, in step 178, the variable "I" is incremented by 1 in order toindicate the next element entry in tee frequency record. In fact,because another entry 155 was inserted in the record before thecurrently examined record, the element indicated by the variable "I"after the increment continues to refer to the currently examinedelement.

Next, the number of occurrences of the selected word, or its frequency(field 158), for element "P" is set in step 180 to be the frequency(field 158) of the selected word for the currently examined element,element "I". Processing then continues with retrieving the parent of theelement "P" in step 176.

With the procedure illustrated in FIG. 10, the cumulative frequencyrecord for a selected word is developed responsive to a search requestby a user of the system.

An alternate embodiment for performing a full text index of a documentis illustrated in FIG. 11. This method is preferable when adequate spaceis available on the mass storage device for holding a frequency table150, such as in FIG. 9, and when a document is especially long. Thismethod is preferably performed before a user of the system reads adocument-or performs any searches on it, and is usually performed by thepublisher of the document.

The process of full text indexing of FIG. 11 begins with the step 190 ofperforming a full traverse on the root element, the uppermost element ofa tree, of the document. The process of the full traverse is describedin more detail below in connection with FIGS. 19A-C. This process isessentially a depth-first search which accepts a pre-function and apost-function to be performed when an element in the tree is visited.During the depth-first search, the element identifier of a traversedelement is placed on a stack by step 192 of the pre-function. If thiselement identifies text to be indexed, as indicated by field 104, asdetermined in step 194, the text is parsed or indexed according tostandard indexing processes in step 196. For each selected word indexedin step 196, an element 155 of the frequency record 152 is established(if necessary) and incremented in step 198 for each element in thestack. If the current element is determined in step 194 not to be of thetype "text", the pre-function ends. Upon completion of a traverse of anelement the post-function simply pops the element identifier of thecurrent element from the stack (step 200). The establishment of anelement 155 in the frequency record 152 and its incrementing, asperformed in step 198, is similar to steps in the alternate methoddescribed and illustrated in FIG. 10. In this manner, cumulativefrequency records for all or certain selected words in the document areconstructed.

According to the present invention, full text indexing may also beapplied to the tag names and attributes of the descriptive markup. Inthis process, the text to be indexed may be retrieved using the textlocation field 104 for attribute information, and using thefully-qualified name location field 102 for markup tag information.Markup elements may be distinguished from text chunks by examination ofthe fully-qualified name location field as well, as this field is `nil`or is a reserved type name such as "#TEXT" for text chunks. Also, sincethe tag name of an element is only part of the fully-qualified name, thetag name may be retrieved by determining the difference between thefully-qualified name of the desired element and the fully-qualified nameof its parent element.

By applying full text indexing to descriptive markup, a user may searchfor occurrences of words within elements of a selected type or even forspecific attributes. For example, a user could search for occurrences ofa selected word which are only within long quotes in a document. Or, ifthe document defines, for example, part number types, specific partnumbers could be found in a document.

Also, SGML supports unique identifier attributes for markup tags. Suchidentifier attributes may also be referenced by other markup tags usingreferencing attributes which include this identifier. Such attributesare often used for cross-references. Thus, by indexing these attributesa user may search for elements in a document which refer to a selectedelement by such cross-references. Also, a user may search for aparticular element.

Rendering of a document will now be described in connection with FIGS.12-20. Rendering includes processes for selecting a point in thedocument from which rendering may begin, displaying the document on anoutput device, and other operations to be performed by a reader of theelectronic document.

A variety of mechanisms may be used for obtaining from a user a desiredstarting point from which rendering of a document may begin. Onewell-known mechanism is a table of contents from which a section of adocument may be selected, such as shown in FIG. 12 and FIG. 14. A usermay also have a directed path, bookmark, history log or other list ofpreselected starting points. A user may also perform a search for a wordbased on the full text index, in known ways of the type as shown in thedisplays of FIGS. 12-13, to begin rendering at a selected occurence of aword. Additionally, a document, while being rendered, may cause possiblecross-references to be displayed, as shown in FIGS. 13-14. Thesecross-references may also be used to select a starting point forrendering of the document.

Rendering may also begin by changing the format of the currentlydisplayed document. Such changes are called alternate views. A user maychange the window size, thus changing the line length of the displayeddocument. Text previously shown or hidden may be hidden or displayeddepending upon a user's selection or security clearance. A user may alsorequest that portions of a document be printed.

The preferred method for rendering a document, that is, displayingformatted text of a document on an output device, uses an elementdirectory for the selected document, a selected starting point, anindication of the desired format specification for element type in thedocument and a specification of an output device, such as a "window" ona graphic display or a printer. Formal: specifications are also known asstyle sheets. A sample style sheet illustrating typical content is shownin FIG. 15. Such style sheets are well known in the art of electronicpublishing and are normally used for compiling and formatting a documentto make it ready for printing. Such style sheets normally include anindication of the font type, size, slant, weight, coloring, indentation,line spacing, justification, and spacing for markup elements. A broadrange of possible formatting properties is described in ISO/IEC DIS10179. With the present invention, it is also possible for an element toinherit formatting properties from its parent element.

Preferably a style sheet is also provided for the table of contents. Inthe preferred embodiment, this style sheet is used both for theconstruction of the table of contents and its display. The preferredstyle sheet for the table of contents includes, as part of the formatfor a type of element, the relative location of title text, for thattype of element. The relative location indicates the type of thesub-element in which the text of the title occurs. Subsequently, eachitem having a title may be displayed as part of a table of contents.

The construction of the table of contents will now be described inconnection with the flowchart of FIG. 16. The first step of thisconstruction is step 210 of traversing the document beginning with theroot element. This traversal is essentially a depth-first search, whichwill be described in more detail below in connection with FIGS. 19A-C,and is similar to the traversal described in step 190 of FIG. 11.

The pre-function performed for an element during the traversal of thedocument tree comprises the steps 212 of constructing the table ofcontents record for this element, and step 214 of writing the table ofcontents record for the element to the table of contents file.

The table of contents record for an element preferably includes anindication of its element identifier, its type (optional), and theelement identifier of the next element in the document of the same orhigher level. The next element may be obtained from the right siblingfield 100 of the current element descriptor 90, or of the currentelement's parent, or higher parent elements, etc. For example, therecord for the last section of a chapter in a book may point to the nextchapter element of that book. The record for the last element of thislast section also points to the next chapter. After the traversal of thecurrent element is complete, the post-function is return step 216.

When the table of contents construction is completed, the constructedtable of contents records are written to a file in the mass storagedevice, preferably ordered according to element identifier. With thistable of contents construction, an element having a title may bedisplayed in the table of contents.

The above-described construction of a table of contents is also a formof excerpted view. Similar excerpted views may also be made, forexample, for tables of figures or references found in a document. Byproviding a style sheet for a desired excerpted view, a record similarto the table of contents record may be constructed. These excerptedviews may then be displayed effectively in real time, as the renderingprocess is enabled to access the selected elements without searchingthrough the whole document.

When the table of contents is displayed on the screen, as in FIGS.12-14, the title for the first element in the table of contents file isdisplayed. A section of the table of contents may then be expanded, forexample, responsive to a mouse event or other indication by a user, bydisplaying the titles for any immediate sub-elements of a selecteddisplayed element and for subsequent elements which were in the originaldisplay. The rendering of the text for the table of contents may beperformed in the same manner as a document. Document rendering will bedescribed in more detail below.

Rendering of a document and the table of contents along with associatedgraphics and other information results in views, for example, asillustrated in FIGS. 12-14.

These display features provided for electronic documents will now bedescribed in connection with FIGS. 12-14. As illustrated in FIG. 14,different views of the same document may be produced having differentfonts, margins and other format specifications without reformatting orotherwise modifying the electronic representation of the document. Auser may simply select different style sheets for different views. Theprocess of rendering includes formatting the document while it is beingdisplayed, i.e. "on-the-fly," in the selected formatting style, byapplying the style sheet for each element rather than combining it withthe document and/or modifying the electronic representation of thedocument.

Another feature provided by the indexing and rendering methods enablescumulative search statistics to be displayed in combination with thetable of contents as shown in FIGS. 12-13. A user may instruct thesystem to search on a given word in a document. The elements in whichthe selected word occurs may be determined from the frequency record forthe selected word. By providing a style sheet for the table of contentswhich directs the rendering process to examine a selected variable, e.g."word", which may store a value indicative of a selected search word,when a table of contents then is displayed, the number of occurrences inthe element corresponding to the item for the selected word may beretrieved from its frequency record and displayed. Thus, a user may knowhow many times a word occurs in each section of a document whose tableof contents item is displayed. A user may then determine relevantportions of the displayed document.

The process of displaying and formatting a document will now bedescribed in connection with the flowcharts of FIGS. 17-25. Thisprocess, in contrast to previous systems which compile a document andformat information into one document, which is then used for displaypurposes, renders a document without modifying the document or itsinternal representation. The text which is displayed, or sent to anoutput device, is not pre-formatted, but rather is formatted"on-the-fly". Moreover, formatting is not considered as a sequence ofcommands but as properties which are applied to an element of adocument. Thus, all formatting properties which are changed for anelement are restored at the end of the processing of that element.Separate instructions are not required for element ends. Thus, noside-effects are created on later elements which are not sub-elements ofthe displayed element.

The first step in the rendering operation is step 220 of finding anelement, i.e. its element identifier from which rendering may begin.Step 220 is used to handle the case where the starting point selected bythe user is not at a location in the document at which rendering ispreferably started. For example, the selected starting point may occurin the middle of a sentence or paragraph; however, rendering preferablybegins with an element that, when displayed, starts at the beginning ofa new display line, for aesthetic purposes. Such an element may also bedescribed as starting after a breaking point in the document. Step 220of finding a starting element is followed by step 221 of initializing astyle stack by pushing the style definitions for all parent elementspreceding the starting element onto a style stack. This step preferablyuses the first end of a double-ended queue which is the style stack.Parent elements are retrieved from the element descriptors of thestarting element, its parent element and preceding parent elements. Thestyle definitions are retrieved and evaluated as they are placed on thestack in a manner to be described in more detail below in connectionwith FIG. 17B.

Step 221 of initializing the style stack is followed by a full traverse,to be described later, from the located starting element (step 222). Asmentioned above, the full traverse is a depth-first search, whichperforms a pre-function before the traversal of an element (i.e. beforeits children are visited) and a post-function after the traversal (i.e.after its children are visited). The goal of this traversal is to visiteach node of the tree representing the document, both before and aftervisiting its children, starting from a provided node and continuingthrough thee whole tree (unless it aborts before completing). Thistraversal may. also be considered as a complete depth-first search of atree, starting with the root element which omits performing functions onthese elements until the starting node is reached.

The pre-function, illustrated in FIG. 17B, to be performed on an elementduring the traversal of step 222, will now be described. The first stepof the rendering pre-function is step 224 of determining whether theelement is a text chunk. This step may be accomplished by examining thetype name field 102 for the current element. If the element is a textchunk, the text is retrieved from the text file and sent to the outputdevice, formatted according to the style settings provided at the top ofa style stack (step 226). The style stack is constructed during thetraversal of non-text elements described below.

As part of this step of displaying the text, it is preferable to stopdisplaying text when the end of the window, or viewable display area, isreached. By stopping the display of the text, processing of text whichis not viewable may be eliminated. If a user selects the later text,such as by scrolling the window, re-rendering of the document from astarting point after the original starting point normally produces thedesired result. It is also possible to save a small amount ofpre-rendered text for elements occurring shortly after the end of thewindow is reached. It is also possible to perform some formattingfunctions for a small amount of text previous to the displayed text, andsave it temporarily.

If an element is not a text chunk, as determined in step 224, the styleat the top of the style stack, if any, is copied into a variable, e.g"new", in step 228. The top of the stack is preferably the second end ofthe double-ended queue. If the stack is empty, the style record isinitialized to default values, as defined for the graphic display systembeing used. The style record includes display and format specificationsrequired by the graphic display used by the data processing system.Extra information provided by the style sheet is ignored for of a stylerecord.

When a current style is copied into the variable, "new", during step228, processing continues with step 230 of retrieving thefully-qualified style name for the current element from field 102 of theelement descriptor 90 for the current element. on the basis of theretrieved fully-qualified style name, the style definition for that nameis retrieved from the provided style sheet in step 232. Optionally,previously retrieved and evaluated style definitions may be stored in acache. Step 232 of retrieving the style definition may search such acache. However, with markup languages that allow attributes, formattingcharacteristics which depend on an attribute may not be cached accordingonly to the type name. It is preferable to cache formatting for generictype names and apply the formatting required by the attribute to thetype name. If the style definition for that style name is not found, asdetermined in step 234, the first component is removed from the stylename in step, 236. For example, if a. style definition could not befound for "BOOK,FRONTMATTER", then the component "BOOK" is removed fromthe fully-qualified style name. If a style name remains after step 236,as determined in step 238, processing continues by returning to step 232of retrieving the style definition for the new, shorter name. If no nameremains, as determined in step 238, processing continues by pushing thestyle represented by the variable, "new", unchanged, onto the stylestack. The displayed element will then look like its parent elementexcept for those formatting characteristics which may not be inherited.Any further display actions required by the style, such as for theattachment of annotations, are completed in step 242. The process ofattaching annotations (step 242) will be described in further detailbelow in connection with FIG. 21.

If the definition for a qualified style name is found, as determined instep 234, settings for the style definition are evaluated in step 244.If the style definition was retrieved from the cache, step 244 ofevaluating may be omitted. For example, if the style sheet indicatesthat the left margin is to be increased by 5 spaces, the old value ofthe left margin is incremented by 5 spaces. Thus, the style definitionsare evaluated when applied to an element instance and are not compiled.Expressions in the style sheet which are evaluated may include functionsfor examining system-status information, such as the identification ofthe user, values of attributes for the current element, neighboringelements in the tree, or the current state of any formatting property,such as the margins. Evaluated settings are placed into the appropriatelocation in the style record of the variable, "new", (step 246). Whenthe "new" style for the current element is complete (step 246), it ispushed onto the style stack in 240, as previously described.

In step 244 of evaluating the style definition, inheritance of all orsome style properties may also be performed. Inheritance, orcombination, of style properties by an element from its parent elementis enabled by omitting properties from the, format specification (i.e.style sheet definition) for a type name or by instructing, via the stylesheet, that the property be inherited. Some properties may also bedefined so that they may not be inherited. In this instance, omittedproperties in a format specification are evaluated to default values.Thus, as the parent format specification is the initial value of "new",those settings which are not changed are inherited. Such inheritance isuseful, for example, for indicating the font in which a whole book is tobe displayed or printed.

According to the preferred embodiment, which uses a windowing system,the right margin is defined not by the line length but by a distancefrom the right edge of the window. This specification simplifiesrendering of a document after a window is re-sized horizontally.Specifying a right, margin also permits line breaks to appear at anaesthetically pleasing location. Most word processors specify a linelength and clip off the ends of lines which extend beyond the currentwindow width rather than re-adjusting the text to fit.

The post-function for rendering, performed after the traversal of anelement, will now be described in connection with FIG. 17C. The firststep of the post-function is step 250 of determining if the currentelement is a text chunk. If the element is a text chunk, thepost-function returns in step 252. Otherwise, processing continues withstep 254 of performing end processing required by the current style.Such end processing may include, for example, placing a blank line aftera paragraph. End processing is followed by step 256 of popping the stylestack. The popped style may also be placed into a cache as describedabove.

The process of finding a suitable starting point from a providedstarting point (step 220, FIG. 17A) will now be described in furtherdetail in connection with FIGS. 18A-C. The first step in finding thestarting point is initializing a variable, e.g. "saved element", to a`nil` value (step 260). Next, the document is traversed backwards fromthe starting point selected by the user in step 262. This backwardtraversal procedure is simply the above-described depth-first searchperformed in reverse. This process is described below in further detailin connection with FIGS. 19A-C. For each. element traversed in step 262,a pre-function, to be described below in connection with FIG. 18B, and apost-function, to be described below in connection with FIG. 18C, isperformed. The pre- and post-functions save, as the "saved element", anelement, preferably the nearest element, previous to the providedstarting point, before which a line break or breaking point occursand/or from which rendering may preferably begin. An element may cause abreak either before or after itself. Thus, an element causing a breakbefore itself becomes the, "saved element". An element causing a breakafter itself causes the "saved element" to be the element which followsthe "break-after" element. When the traverse of step 262 has completed,the "saved element" is returned by step 264 to the rendering procedure.A full traverse is then performed beginning with the "saved element", instep 222 of FIG. 17A, to display the document.

The pre-function and post-function for the backwards traversal forfinding the starting point will now be described in connection withFIGS. 18B-C. As the pre- and post-functions are similar, only one needbe described. The first step of the pre-function is to retrieve the typeof the element which is currently being traversed (step 270). This step270 of retrieval is performed by retrieving fully-qualified name field102 of the element identifier 90 (FIG. 6) from the element directory 91.The style for the current element is then constructed in step 272 in amanner similar to the style construction for rendering described above,using the fully-qualified name for the current element and the stylesheet for the desired view. It is then determined, in step 274B, whetherthe current element is a breaking element which is not columnar. Thatis, if rendering of the current element is specified by the style sheetto start at the beginning of a display line and the element is not anelement found within a multi-columnar structure, the current element issaved, in step 276B, as the "saved element". Both of thesecharacteristics may be determined from the style definition for theelement. The traversal in progress is then indicated to abort in step278. If it is determined in step 274B that the current element is not abreaking element or is columnar, the traversal continues. Thepost-function is similar, except that it determines, in step 274C,whether a break occurs after the currently traversed element rather thanbefore. The "saved element", in step 276C, then becomes the followingelement of the same or higher level.

The full traversal of the document mentioned above, or the depth-firstsearch, will now be described in connection with FIGS. 19A-B. Thistraversal uses an element identifier, a pre-function and apost-function, and an indication of whether the content of the currentelement, i.e. the children and other elements below the current elementin the tree, should also be traversed. The content of the currentelement is normally . traversed, except for the above-describedprocedure for finding a starting point, which performs a backwardstraverse. It should also be evident that FIGS. 19A-B describe a fulltraverse forward of a document, from a starting point. For a backwardtraverse the steps of retrieving a "right" sibling retrieve a "left"sibling, those retrieving a "first" sibling retrieve a "last" sibling,those performing the "post" function perform the "pre" function and viceversa. As a pre-function corresponds to the beginning (or start tag) ofan element, during a backwards traverse, the pre-function is performedon it after its children are traversed. The post-function is appliedsimilarly to the end of an element.

As stated above, the goal of the traversal process is to visit eachelement, beginning with a provided element, both before and aftervisiting its children, and to continue through the document to thedocument end. The pre-function is performed when a node is first visitedand the post-function is performed after its children have been visited.

The first step of traversing the document from a given starting point isa step 280 of determining whether the start element is nil. If the startelement is nil, the traversal ends.

Otherwise, processing continues with step 282 of testing whether anabort flag is set. An abort flag may have been set by the pre- orpost-function of finding the starting point for example. An abort flagsignifies that the current traversal process is complete and should beterminated. If the abort flag is not set, processing continues with step284 of determining whether the content of the traversed element shouldbe traversed as well (step 284). Usually, a traverse visits the contentof that element. However, when a suitable starting point for renderingis sought, only breaking points occurring before the provided startingpoint element selected for rendering are relevant. Thus the content ofthe selected element is ignored. If "include-content" is false, theprovided post-function is performed on the provided starting point instep 286. The pre-function is performed for a backward traverse.Otherwise, a traversal function is called on the given starting elementin step 288. This traversal procedure is described below in furtherdetail in connection with FIG. 20.

Processing continues with step 290 of determining whether the traverseshould be aborted as indicated by the results of the post-function ofstep 286 or the traversal of step 288. If the traversal is to beaborted, it ends; otherwise a variable "cur" is set to be the startingelement in step 292, thus initializing that variable. Processingcontinues with step 294 of setting "cur" to be the right sibling, orleft sibling for a backwards traversal, of the current element indicatedby "cur". Next, a determination is made during step 296 as to whetherthe value of "cur" is nil. If the element, "cur", is not nil, atraversal on that element is performed in step 298. This traversal willbe described below in further detail in connection with FIG. 20. It isthen determined in step 300 whether the traversal is to be aborted,according to the outcome of the traversal in step 298. If a traversal isto be aborted, the traversal ends. Otherwise, processing returns to step294.

If it is determined through step 296 that the element "cur" is nil,processing continues with step 302, (FIG. 19B) of setting the variable"cur" to the original starting element, and another variable "TEMP" tonil. Processing continues with step 304 of determining if the element"cur" is the root element of the document. If the element is the root,the traversal ends, otherwise, it is determined in step 306 whether thevariable "TEMP" is nil. If "TEMP" is nil, the variable "cur" is set tobe the parent of the current element "cur" as determined from the field92 of the element identifier 94 element (step 308). Next, it isdetermined in step 310 whether the element "cur" is nil. If the element"cur" is nil, the traversal ends, otherwise the provided post-functionis performed in step 312 on the element "cur". The pre-function isperformed for a backwards traverse.

After the post-function is performed in step 312, it is determined instep 314 whether the post-function has aborted. The traversal ends ifthe post-function aborts, otherwise the variable "TEMP" is set to be theright sibling of the element "cur" in step 316 and processing continueswith step 304. For a backwards traverse, the variable "TEMP" is set tobe the left sibling of the element "cur".

If it was determined previously in step 306 that the variable "TEMP" isnil, the full traversal described in connection with FIGS. 19A and 19Bis performed on the element indicated by the variable "RSIS" in step318.

The partial traversal mentioned above in connection with FIGS. 19A-Bwill now be described in connection with FIG. 20. Partial traversalbegins with step 320 of calling the pre-function on the elementindicated by the variable "root" for which the partial traversal isbeing performed. The post-function is performed for a backward traverse.It is determined in step 322 whether the pre-function has aborted, i.e.returned false. If the traversal is determined not to abort in step 322,processing continues with step 324 of retrieving the element identifierfor the first child, or last child for a backwards traversal, fromfields 96 or 98 respectively of the element descriptor 90 for the givenelement (FIG. 5). A variable "temp" is set to this child elementidentifier. If the child of the element "root" is not null, asdetermined in step 326, a traversal is performed on it, i.e. variable"temp", in step 328 in a recursive manner. That is, the currenttraversal is temporarily suspended until the new traversal is completed.When the recursive traversal completes, it is determined in step 330whether the traversal should be aborted. If the traversal is not to beaborted, processing continues with step 332 of retrieving the rightsibling, or left sibling for a backward traverse, of the element "root".From the entry 90 for this element "roof", from the element directory(FIG. 5), the variable "temp" is set to the retrieved elementidentifier. Processing then continues with step 326 as described above.If in step 326 it is determined that "temp" is null, the appropriatepost-function is performed on the element "root" in step 334. Thepre-function is performed for a backward traverse. The traversal ofelement "root" is completed with the completion of this post-function.

The traversal described above in connection with FIGS. 19A-C may beoptimized in a special case. If the element identifiers for each elementwithin a document are sequential according to the order these elementsappear within the document, and a post-function is not required for thedesired purpose of the traversal, the full traverse may be performed onthe element simply by applying the pre-function to each element in theorder defined by their element identifiers. Such an optimization wouldbe useful, for example, in connection with the table of contentsconstruction as described above in connection with FIG. 16.

The attachment of annotations mentioned above in connection with FIG.17B will now be described in more detail in connection with FIG. 21.Annotations and attributes, such as cross-references, graphic displays,footnotes and other special display features for a document may berendered on the display terminal in the text or by separate views. For adocument, a list of annotations may be provided with an indication ofthe identifier of the element to which the annotation belongs. Theplacement of the annotation on the graphic display depends on the stylesheet provided for annotations in a given view. For example, a stylesheet may indicate that annotations (or only specific types ofannotations) should be displayed directly after an element, in anelement, at the left margin of the display, centered, at the rightmargin, or other formatting features. Often, annotations are simplymarked on the display by an icon for which separate views may bedisplayed responsive to a user's selection of such an icon. Somepublishers may also choose (via the style sheet) to highlight,underline, or otherwise modify the format of the text in an element thathas an annotation.

The first step of attaching an annotation is step 340 of searching theannotation list for the identifier for the element currently beingrendered on the graphic display system. If no annotation is found, asdetermined in step 342, the attachment for annotations in that selectedelement is complete. Otherwise, processing continues in step 344 forretrieving the type for the annotation from its record in the annotationlist. Next, the style for that type of, annotation is found from thestyle sheet for the current view of the document (step 346). Theannotation is then rendered on the screen according to the style found(step 348). Typically, the style indicates that an icon is to bedisplayed somewhere on the screen near the selected element. Next,information about the annotation is recorded on the view under theelement's identifier in step 350. The details of this recording aredescribed in more detail below. Processing continues with step 352 ofsearching for the next annotation in the list for the currentlydisplayed element, and returning to step 342 as described above. In thismanner, annotations for a given element are displayed for that elementwhen that element is rendered.

Recording of the information about the annotation (step 350) may beomitted in other embodiments; however, in the preferred embodiment using"X Windows", this step is preferable. In X Windows, a view of adocument, or a "window", has a corresponding data structure, with whichthose skilled in the art are familiar, which stores informationregarding the location on the screen, the size, etc. of the window. Whenan annotation is attached, relevant information is recorded in anannotation data structure such as a "web", described below. Suchrelevant information may include the element identifier in which itoccurs and a pointer to instructions to be performed when the icon isselected. Other view-independent information may also be recorded. Inthe view data structure the element identifier and a pointer to the webare stored, along with any other view-dependent information, such as thelocation of an icon for the annotation.

A user may also be provided with the capability of making private andpublic annotations, bookmarks, history logs and directed paths, whichare graphically illustrated in FIG. 22 as part of the documentstructure. Using such structures a reader of an electronic document mayattach comments or other information to a document, create paths througha document which other may follow later, and backtrack to previouslyviewed sections of a document.

Such capability normally needs to be provided without modifying thedocuments being read because a document may be on a read-only medium, orbecause a user may not have authority to modify the document, or becausedifferent users may be applying modifications to unconnected copies ofthe document and may wish to share such modifications.

Annotations may be made in a manner well known to hypertext systems,known as a web, a type of annotation list. A web is a possibly indexedlist of anchor-sets. Each anchor-set represents a hypertext link betweenthe anchors in the set. Each anchor refers to a location in a documentand specifies a name for the data representation used by the document.The location in an anchor-set may be a document name, a markup tag in adocument, a graphics file, another computer process, or otherrepresentations.

A web may be sorted and/or indexed according to the sequence of creationof anchor-sets or by properties associated either automatically ormanually with links in the web. An anchor, anchor-set, or web may alsorecord information such as the time of its creation, the identity of theuser (creating an annotation, security permissions, keyword and typeinformation, titles and the like.

The web utilized in the present invention may be modified so that itincludes the element identifier to which the annotation points ratherthan a pointer into the document itself. In this manner, the web may bereadily searched by the procedure of attaching annotations describedabove in connection with FIG. 21. Bookmarks, history logs and directedpaths are also treated in the same manner as annotations and optionallyinclude information such as titles, date of creation, type and the likeand may be formed either by selection from the table of contents or inresponse to rendering events caused by a user. Such lists may be readilyconstructed by methods known to those skilled in the art.

In the preferred embodiment, annotations, bookmarks, directed paths andhistory logs are uniformly treated, thus permitting a user to moveinformation among all of these types of lists. Moreover, a user needonly learn how to use one type of interface to use these navigationaltools. Furthermore, a portable representation, such as SGML, enablesthese structures to be shared and to be mailed through networksindependent of documents or types of machines. Thus, for example, usersof a maintenance manual for a large system could combine annotations,such as for corrections and the like, and submit them to the publisherof the document.

Having now described a preferred embodiment of the present invention, itwould be obvious to those skilled in the art that various changes andmodifications may be made therein without departing from the scope ofthe invention as described by the appended claims.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method of producing a digital form of a portionof a hierarchical digital document, the digital document havingdescriptive markup defining a plurality of hierarchical elements,wherein each element has a type name, and has at least one of anancestor element, a child element, a left sibling element, a rightsibling element and unformatted text content, the method using arepresentation of the digital document, including, for each element, anindication of any ancestor element, child element, and left and rightsibling element, the method comprising:sending a request for a portionof the digital document using an indication of a starting point withinthe digital document; receiving only the requested portion of thedigital document including selected elements containing the indicatedstarting point; and generating a digital form of the received portion ofthe digital document by applying properties corresponding to thereceived selected elements to the text content of said elements.
 2. Themethod of claim 1, wherein receiving only the requested portion includesreceiving a starting point element, the starting point element havingbeen selected according to the indicated starting point; andwherein thestep of generating a digital form includes:providing a plurality ofproperty specifications for type names utilized for elements in thedigital document; receiving an identity of any ancestor elements of thestarting point element; and applying a property specificationcorresponding to the type name of ancestor elements identified for eachselected element to the text content of each selected element to producethe digital form.
 3. The method of claim 2, wherein the step of applyingthe property specification includes:retrieving the propertyspecification of each ancestor element of the starting point element inthe digital document; and combining the property specifications of theancestor elements with the property specification of the starting pointelement.
 4. The method of claim 3, further comprising the stepsof:providing access, for each markup element, to an element descriptoraddressable by a unique identifier for the markup element for storing aunique identifier of the parent element of the markup element; andwherein the step of applying property specifications includes retrievingan indication of said each ancestor element from the element descriptorfor the starting point element and said each ancestor element using theunique element identifiers corresponding to the starting point elementand said each ancestor element.
 5. The method of claim 3, wherein thetype name of a markup element includes the type name of any ancestorelement; andwherein the step of retrieving the property specification ofeach ancestor element comprises retrieving said property specificationusing the type name of the ancestor element obtained from the type nameof the starting point element.
 6. The method of claim 3, furthercomprising the step of temporarily storing in a stack the propertyspecification of any ancestor element.
 7. The method of claim 2, furthercomprising the steps of:providing access to a web that stores anannotation to an element in the digital document, said web including,for each annotation, the unique element identifier of the annotatedelement and an indication of the annotation; and wherein the step ofapplying property specifications to the text content of an elementincludes the steps of searching the web for the unique elementidentifier of the element and generating an indication that the elementhas an annotation if the element identifier for the element is found inthe web.
 8. The method of claim 2, further comprising the step ofstoring an indication of the starting point element in a history table.9. The method of claim 2, wherein an element may have a securityattribute and wherein the step of applying property specifications tothe text content of an element includes the step of omitting the textcontent of an element having a security attribute.
 10. The method ofclaim 2, further comprising the steps of:receiving said indication of astarting point within the digital document; and providing at an outputthe digital form.
 11. A process of producing a digital informationproduct comprising computer data signals defining a digital form of aportion of a hierarchical digital document, the digital document havingdescriptive markup defining a plurality of hierarchical elements,wherein each element has a type name, and has at least one of anancestor element, a child element, a left sibling element, a rightsibling element and unformatted text content, the method using arepresentation of the digital document, including, for each element, anindication of any ancestor element, child element, and left and rightsibling element, the process comprising:sending a request for a portionof the digital document using an indication of a starting point withinthe digital document; receiving only the requested portion of thedigital document including selected elements containing the indicatedstarting point; and generating a digital form of the received portion ofthe digital document by applying properties corresponding to thereceived selected elements to the text content of said elements, andencoding the digital form in a computer data signal.
 12. The process ofclaim 11, wherein receiving only the requested portion includesreceiving a starting point element, the starting point element havingbeen selected according to the indicated starting point; andwherein thestep of generating a digital form includes:providing a plurality ofproperty specifications for type names utilized for elements in thedigital document; receiving an identity of any ancestor elements of thestarting point element; and applying a property specificationcorresponding to the type name of ancestor elements identified for eachselected element to the text content of each selected element to producethe digital form.
 13. The process of claim 12, wherein the step ofapplying the property specification includes:retrieving the propertyspecification of each ancestor element of the starting point element inthe digital document; and combining the property specifications of theancestor elements with the property specification of the starting pointelement.
 14. The process of claim 13, further comprising the stepsof:providing access, for each markup element, to an element descriptoraddressable by a unique identifier for the markup element for storing aunique identifier of the parent element of the markup element; andwherein the step of applying property specifications includes retrievingan indication of said each ancestor element from the element descriptorfor the starting point element and said each ancestor element using theunique element identifiers corresponding to the starting point elementand said each ancestor element.
 15. The process of claim 13, wherein anelement may have a security attribute and wherein the step of applyingproperty specifications to the text content of an element includes thestep of omitting the text content of an element having a securityattribute.
 16. The process of claim 13, wherein the type name of amarkup element includes the type name of any ancestor element;andwherein the step of retrieving the property specification of eachancestor element comprises retrieving said property specification usingthe type name of the ancestor element obtained from the type name of thestarting point element.
 17. The process of claim 13, further comprisingthe step of temporarily storing in a stack the property specification ofany ancestor element.
 18. The process of claim 12, further comprisingthe steps of:providing access to a web that stores an annotation to anelement in the digital document, said web including, for eachannotation, the unique element identifier of the annotated element andan indication of the annotation; and wherein the step of applyingproperty specifications to the text content of an element includes thesteps of searching the web for the unique element identifier of theelement and generating an indication that the element has an annotationif the element identifier for the element is found in the web.
 19. Theprocess of claim 12, further comprising the step of providing access toan indication of the starting point element in a history table.
 20. Theprocess of claim 12, further comprising the steps of:receiving saidindication of a starting point within the digital document; andproviding at an output the digital form.
 21. A data processing systemfor producing a digital form of a portion of a hierarchical digitaldocument, the digital document having descriptive markup defining aplurality of hierarchical elements, wherein each element has a typename, and has at least one of an ancestor element, a child element, aleft sibling element, a right sibling element and unformatted textcontent, the system using a representation of the digital document,including, for each element, an indication of any ancestor element,child element, and left and right sibling element, the systemcomprising:means for sending a request for a portion of the digitaldocument using an indication of a starting point with in the digitaldocument; means for receiving only the requested portion of the digitaldocument including selected elements containing the indicated startingpoint; and means for generating a digital form of the received portionof the digital document by applying properties corresponding to thereceived selected elements to the text content of said elements.
 22. Thedata processing system of claim 21, wherein the means for receiving onlythe requested portion includes means for receiving a starting pointelement, the starting point element having been selected according tothe indicated starting point; andwherein the means of generating adigital form includes:means for providing a plurality of propertyspecifications for type names utilized for elements in the digitaldocument; means for receiving an identity of any ancestor elements ofthe starting point element; and means for applying a propertyspecification corresponding to the type name of ancestor elementsidentified for each selected element to the text content of eachselected element to produce the digital form.
 23. The data processingsystem of claim 22, wherein means for applying the propertyspecification includes:means for retrieving the property specificationof each ancestor element of the starting point element in the digitaldocument; and means for combining the property specifications of theancestor elements with the property specification of the starting pointelement.
 24. The data processing system of claim 23, furthercomprising:means for providing access, for each markup element, to anelement descriptor addressable by a unique identifier for the markupelement for storing a unique identifier of the parent element of themarkup element; and wherein the means for applying propertyspecifications includes means for retrieving an indication of said eachancestor element from the element descriptor for the starting pointelement and means for said each ancestor element to use the uniqueelement identifiers corresponding to the starting point element and saideach ancestor element.
 25. The data processing system of claim 23,wherein the type name of a markup element includes the type name of anyancestor element; andwherein the means for retrieving the propertyspecification of each ancestor element comprises means for retrievingsaid property specification using the type name of the ancestor elementobtained from the type name of the starting point element.
 26. The dataprocessing system of claim 23, further comprising means for temporarilystoring in a stack the property specification of any ancestor element.27. The data processing system of claim 22, further comprising:means forproviding access to a web that stores an annotation to an element in thedigital document, said web including, for each annotation, the uniqueelement identifier of the annotated element and an indication of theannotation; and wherein the means for applying property specificationsto the text content of an element includes means for searching the webfor the unique element identifier of the element and means forgenerating an indication that the element has an annotation if theelement identifier for the element is found in the web.
 28. The dataprocessing system of claim 22, further comprising means for providingaccess to an indication of the starting point element in a historytable.
 29. The data processing system of claim 22, wherein an elementmay have a security attribute and wherein the means for applyingproperty specifications to the text content of an element includes meansfor omitting the text content of an element having a security attribute.30. The data processing system of claim 22, further comprising:means forreceiving said indication of a starting point within the digitaldocument; and means for providing at an output the digital form.
 31. Adata processing system for producing a digital form of a portion of ahierarchical digital document, the digital document having descriptivemarkup defining a plurality of hierarchical elements, wherein eachelement has a type name, and has at least one of an ancestor element, achild element, a left sibling element, a right sibling element andunformatted text content, the method using a representation of thedigital document, including, for each element, an indication of anyancestor element, child element, and left and right sibling element, thesystem comprising:a data requesting component that produces at an outputa request for a portion of the digital document including an indicationof a starting point within the digital document; and a data processingcomponent that receives as an input the requested portion of the digitaldocument including selected elements containing the indicated startingpoint, received in response to the output of the data requestingcomponent, and that generates at an output a digital form of the digitaldocument, the output being generated by the application of propertiescorresponding to the received selected elements to the text content ofsaid elements.
 32. The data processing system of claim 31, wherein thereceived portion includes a starting point element, the starting pointelement having been selected according to the indicated starting point;andwherein the data processing component includes:means for providing aplurality of property specifications for type names utilized forelements in the digital document; means for receiving an identity of anyancestor elements of the starting point element; and means for applyinga property specification corresponding to the type name of ancestorelements identified for each selected element to the text content ofeach selected element to produce the digital form.
 33. The dataprocessing system of claim 32, wherein the means for applying propertyspecifications includes:means for retrieving the property specificationof each ancestor element of the starting point element in the digitaldocument; and means for combining the property specifications of theancestor elements with the property specification of the starting pointelement.
 34. The data processing system of claim 33, furthercomprising:a first data access component that provides access, for eachmarkup element, to an element descriptor addressable by a uniqueidentifier for the markup element for storing a unique identifier of theparent element of the markup element; and wherein the means for applyingproperty specifications includes means for retrieving an indication ofsaid each ancestor element from the element descriptor for the startingpoint element and means for said each ancestor element to use the uniqueelement identifiers corresponding to the starting point element and saideach ancestor element.
 35. The data processing system of claim 33,wherein the type name of a markup element includes the type name of anyancestor element; andwherein the means for retrieving the propertyspecification of each ancestor element comprises means for retrievingsaid property specification using the type name of the ancestor elementobtained from the type name of the starting point element.
 36. The dataprocessing system of claim 33, further comprising a storage componentthat temporarily stores in a stack the property specification of anyancestor element.
 37. The data processing system of claim 32, furthercomprising:a second data access component that provides access to a webthat stores an annotation to an element in the digital document, saidweb including, for each annotation, the unique element identifier of theannotated element and an indication of the annotation; and wherein themeans for applying property specifications to the text content of anelement includes means for searching the web for the unique elementidentifier of the element and means for generating an indication thatthe element has an annotation if the element identifier for the elementis found in the web.
 38. The data processing system of claim 32, furthercomprising:a third data access component that provides access to anindication of the starting point element in a history table.
 39. Thedata processing system of claim 32, wherein an element may have asecurity attribute and wherein the means for applying propertyspecifications to the text content of an element includes means foromitting the text content of an element having a security attribute. 40.The data processing system of claim 32, wherein the data requestingcomponent receives at an input said indication of a starting pointwithin the digital document.
 41. A computer program product forproducing a digital form of a portion of a hierarchical digitaldocument, the digital document having descriptive markup defining aplurality of hierarchical elements, wherein each element has a typename, and has at least one of an ancestor element, a child element, aleft sibling element, a right sibling element and unformatted textcontent, the method using a representation of the digital document,including, for each element, an indication of any ancestor element,child element, and left and right sibling element, the computer programproduct comprising:a computer readable medium having computer programlogic stored thereon, wherein the computer program logic defines:a datarequesting component which produces at an output a request for a portionof the digital document including an indication of a starting pointwithin the digital document; and a data processing component thatreceives as an input the requested portion of the digital documentincluding selected elements containing the indicated starting point,received in response to the output of the data requesting component, andwhich generates at an output a digital form of the digital document, theoutput being generated by the application of properties corresponding tothe received selected elements to the text content of said elements. 42.The data processing system of claim 41, wherein the received portionincludes a starting point element, the starting point element havingbeen selected according to the indicated starting point; andwherein thedata processing component includes:means for providing a plurality ofproperty specifications for type names utilized for elements in thedigital document; means for receiving an identity of any ancestorelements of the starting point element; and means for applying aproperty specification corresponding to the type name of ancestorelements identified for each selected element to the text content ofeach selected element to produce the digital form.
 43. The dataprocessing system of claim 42, wherein means for applying the propertyspecification includes:means for retrieving the property specificationof each ancestor element of the starting point element in the digitaldocument; and means for combining the property specifications of theancestor elements with the property specification of the starting pointelement.
 44. The data processing system of claim 43, wherein thecomputer program logic further defines:a first data access componentthat provides access, for each markup element, to an element descriptoraddressable by a unique identifier for the markup element for storing aunique identifier of the parent element of the markup element; andwherein the means for applying property specifications includes meansfor retrieving an indication of said each ancestor element from theelement descriptor for the starting point element and means for saideach ancestor element to use the unique element identifierscorresponding to the starting point element and said each ancestorelement.
 45. The data processing system of claim 43, wherein the typename of a markup element includes the type name of any ancestor element;andwherein the means for retrieving the property specification of eachancestor element comprises means for retrieving said propertyspecification using the type name of the ancestor element obtained fromthe type name of the starting point element.
 46. The data processingsystem of claim 43, wherein the computer program logic further defines astorage component that temporarily stores in a stack the propertyspecification of any ancestor element.
 47. The data processing system ofclaim 42, wherein the computer program logic further defines:a seconddata access component that provides access to a web that stores anannotation to an element in the digital document, said web including,for each annotation, the unique element identifier of the annotatedelement and an indication of the annotation; and wherein the means forapplying property specifications to the text content of an elementincludes mean s for searching the web for the unique element identifierof the element and means for generating an indication that the elementhas an annotation if the element identifier for the element is found inthe web.
 48. The data processing system of claim 42, wherein thecomputer program logic further defines a third data access componentthat provides access to an indication of the starting point element in ahistory table.
 49. The data processing system of claim 42, wherein anelement may have a security attribute and wherein the means for applyingproperty specifications to the text content of an element includes meansfor omitting the text content of an element having a security attribute.50. The data processing system of claim 42, wherein the data requestingcomponent receives at an input said indication of a starting pointwithin the digital document.